y different from older
singers. One seldom finds an actual poet, of whatever period, depicted
in the verse of the last century, whose pride is not insisted upon. The
favorite poet-heroes, Aeschylus, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe,
Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as
proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by
following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's
characterization of Byron in _Julian and Maddalo_,

The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light,

has been followed by many expressions of the same thought, at first
wholly sympathetic, lately, it must be confessed, somewhat ironical.

Consciousness of partnership with God in composition naturally lifts the
poet, in his own estimation, at least, to a super-human level. The myth
of Apollo disguised as a shepherd strikes him as being a happy
expression of his divinity. [Footnote: See James Russell Lowell, _The
Shepherd of King Admetus._] Thus Emerson calls singers

Blessed gods in servile masks.
[Footnote: _Saadi._]

The hero of John Davidson's _Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a
Poet_ soars to a monotheistic conception of his powers, asserting

Henceforth I shall be God, for consciousness
Is God. I suffer. I am God.

Another poet-hero is characterized:

He would reach the source of light,
And share, enthroned, the Almighty's might.
[Footnote: Harvey Rice, _The Visionary_ (1864).

In recent years a few poets have modestly disclaimed equality with God.
See William Rose Benet, _Imagination,_ and Joyce Kilmer, _Trees._ The
kinship of poets and the Almighty is the theme of _The Lonely Poet_
(1919), by John Hall Wheelock.]

On the other hand, recent poets' hatred of orthodox religion has led
them to idealize the Evil One, and regard him as no unworthy rival as
regards pride. One of Browning's poets is "prouder than the devil."
[Footnote: _Waring._] Chatterton, according to Rossetti, was "kin
to Milton through his Satan's pride." [Footnote: Sonnet, _To
Chatterton._] Of another poet-hero one of his friends declares,

You would be arrogant, boy, you know, in hell,
And keep the lowest circle to yourself.
[Footnote: Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe_ (1911).]

There is bathos, after these claims, in the concern some poets show over
the question of priority between th